It was difficult not to believe the world was deteriorating when one considered the replacement of Macintosh by Nobbs. Goldwasser sometimes made a great effort to see the world remaining – as he believed it did – much as it always was, and to see Nobbs as a potential Macintosh to a potential incoming Goldwasser. It was not easy. Now that Macintosh had gone on to become Head of the Ethics Department, Goldwasser no longer invented his way through a world of clear, cerebral TEST PLEA DASH SHOCK absolutes. Now his work seemed ever more full of things like the crash survey.

The crash survey showed that people were not interested in reading about road crashes unless there were at least ten dead. A road crash with ten dead, the majority felt, was slightly less interesting than a rail crash with one dead, unless it had piquant details – the ten dead turning out to be five still virginal honeymoon couples, for example, or pedestrians mown down by the local J.P. on his way home from a hunt ball. A rail crash was always entertaining, with or without children’s toys still lying pathetically among the wreckage. Even a rail crash on the Continent made the grade provided there were at least five dead. If it was in the United States the minimum number of dead rose to twenty; in South America 100; in Africa 200; in China 500.

But people really preferred an air crash. Here, curiously enough, people showed much less racial discrimination. If the crash was outside Britain, 50 Pakistanis or 50 dead Filipinos were as entertaining as 50 dead Americans. What people enjoyed most was about 70 dead, with some 20 survivors including children rescued after at least one night in open boats. They liked it to be backed up with a story about a middle-aged housewife who had been booked to fly aboard the plane but who had changed her mind at the last moment.

Goldwasser was depressed for a month over the crash survey. But he could not see any way of producing a satisfactory automated newspaper without finding these things out. Now he was depressed all over again as he formulated the questions to be asked in the murder survey.

His draft ran:

1. Do you prefer to read about a murder in which the victim is (a) a small girl (b) an old lady (c) an illegitimately pregnant woman (d) a prostitute (e) a Sunday school teacher?

2. Do you prefer the alleged murderer to be (a) a teddy boy (b) a respectable middle-aged man (c) an obvious psychopath (d) the victim’s spouse or lover (e) a mental defective?

3. Do you prefer a female corpse to be naked, or to be clad in underclothes?

4. Do you prefer any sexual assault involved to have taken place before or after death?

5. Do you prefer the victim to have been (a) shot (b) strangled (c) stabbed (d) beaten to death (e) kicked to death (f) left to die of exposure?